Stainless Steel

Overview

A modification for Medieval 2: Total War (using v4.1 or lower) or v6.3 for Kingdoms, which combines bug fixes, many small mods, changes to AI and AI armies, more provinces, graphical improvements and many other campaign and battle map changes. Aimed at providing a much greater challenge!

Features

Section based on information in this thread - WIP

New Faction

Order of the Knights Templar

• 7 totally Unique Units with new descriptions
• All other units have specific Templar Knight designs
• Historical Characters and new Templar Knights events
• New Unique Titles which represent the Templar hierarchy
• Very different campaign from all others

see more here

The Templars were replaced by the Crusader states faction in 6.2 and now 6.3

Kingdom of Aragon

Cuman Khanate

Lithuania

Teutonic order

Kingdom of Ireland (was scrapped after 6.2)

Kingdom of Norway

Kievian Rus

Khwarezmid empire

Campaign Map

• 30 New Provinces:

Exeter, Bari, Oporto, Arta, Barcelona, Belgrade, Balearic Isles, Bryansk, Lyon, Athens, Munster, Ancona, Isle of Lesvos, Warsaw, Diyarbakir, Salzburg, Kirov, Melilla, Salamanca, Groningen, Clermont, Thebes, Mecca, Palmyra, Astrakhan, Tortosa, El-Oued, Sinop, Norrköping, Benghazi...

• More Resources on campaign map, including new valuable resources in the "outbacks" of the map.
• Some Small Map Tweaks: trees on isles, slightly changed borders, new passage in Africa

Real recruitment

Latest version have incorperated many elements of the Real Recruitment mod, which is generally aimed at presenting a more realistic army composition and makeup, thus longbowmans won't show up until they were historically avalible, where as late gunpowder units will also not show up right after the gunpowder event. Also, the unit pool and recruitment cost were generally adjusted, thus it becomes prohibitative to maintain only high end units, and their pool is also too small that it would take a long time to recruit them. thus forcing players and AI alike to use significant amount of regular units.

AI Armies

• Changes aimed at improving mix of infantry, missiles, cavalry and artillery.
• Changes aimed at AI producing more Elite and Heavy units, without changing unit costs.

Mercenaries

• New mercenaries for the Early and High Medieval Period:

Macemen

English Huscarls

Light Swordsmen

Swabian Swordsmen

Andalusian Infantry

Mercenary Saracens

Axemen.

• Greater mercenary variety
• Mercenaries can have experience
• Less mercenary missile units
• Regions have more of mercenary special units

Titles/Traits/Ancillaries

• Titles for all Cities and Castles and for both Islamic and Catholic/Orthodox factions and with important bonuses in various settlements.
• Much new Traits, Transferable Titles and Ancillaries (Blood, Broads & Bastards v1.9 or 2.0)
• New Patriarchates for Orthodox Factions available
• Many broken Character Traits and Ancillaries fixed
• Knights Templar Titles

Team and Credits

• King Kong - leader / creator
• Alletun - symbols and graphics
• Student - help and research on the Knights Templar
• Burrek and Whitewolf - new unit textures
• Horsearcher, ziher, Plasticfigurine, Headlock - various graphical improvements

History

Stainless steel 2.0 has been included on the free DVD supplied with a UK gaming magazine.

Releases

Version 6.3 released in this thread on the 3rd of August 2010

Version 6.0/6.1 released in this thread in April 2008

Version 5.0/5.1 released in this thread in October 2007.

Version 4.0/4.1 released in this thread in July 2007.

Version 3.2 was released for the M2TW official patch 1.2 in this thread in May 2007.

Version 2.2 was released in this thread in January 2007.

See Also

Stainless Steel - Mod Registration Form

External Links

Stainless Steel at TWC